M6 – TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12 – 21:10 – SERIES
Five seasons of Legends Office He had made us believe that the art of intelligence supported transparency, that we could dismantle the mechanisms and emotions that govern the lives of secret agents, make them beautiful stories while being perfectly informed about the reality of the profession.
Four episodes of spies of terror bring us back to our senses. This fiction inspired by the investigation of journalist Matthieu Suc (HarperCollins, 2020) is perpetually hindered by reality, that of the work of the French services in the weeks and months that followed the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Saint-Denis and Paris. You have to wait patiently until the work of the actors and the direction of Rodolphe Tissot allow you to find a truth different from that of history, that of fiction.
On the program, long meetings in the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE) and in the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), other meetings between both services, which do not have the same priorities. Foreign intelligence wants to eliminate those responsible for the Islamic State organization (Daesh), as political power demands, while internal intelligence wants to prevent new attacks, even if this means arresting suspects too soon who could lead to their superiors.
Tedious procedures
For these often tedious procedures to be dramatic, even tragic, we must manage to embody them. For a long time, the series struggled to find a balance between the limitations of relative respect for facts and the needs of dramatic art.
The two major intelligence services are played by women: Malika Berthier (Rachida Brakni) for the DGSE and Lucie Kessler (Fleur Geffrier) for the DGSI. Mother, the soldier is married to a Paris firefighter doctor who suffers from post-traumatic stress; The police have an uncertain romance with a colleague from the same department (Pierre Perrier). These annotations initially clutter the story, seeming like forced detours, taken to affirm the humanity of the people responsible for inhuman tasks.
We must detour towards Lille, where Major Vincent Morin (Vincent Elbaz) monitors the jihadist movement. There he recruits Saïd (Rachid Guellaz), who claims to be able to provide him with information in exchange for help repatriating his younger brother committed to the ranks of the Islamic State. By very precisely measuring his character’s motivations (social recognition, profit, family solidarity, civility), Rachid Guellaz brings this entire aspect of the story to light.
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